Reviews > Books

In Paul Auster’s new novel, the ‘Man in the Dark’ is August Brill, a retired book critic with a broken leg, a broken heart, and a serious bout of insomnia. Lacking the season of all natures, sleep, Brill endures an endless cycle of dark nights of the soul by making up escapist stories in his head, an activity that dampens his… READ MORE >

News > Issues

A symposium held in Rome confirmed the Church's position on Pope Pius XII: "'Thanks to the vast quantity of documented material which you have gathered, supported by many authoritative testimonies, your symposium offers to the public forum the possibility of knowing more fully what Pius XII achieved for the Jews persecuted by the Nazi and fascist regimes,'" Benedict said."'One understands, then, that wherever possible he spared no effort in intervening in their favor either directly or through instructions given to other individuals or to institutions of the Catholic Church." READ MORE >

News > Business

This article gets Catholic social teaching right, and exposes the fallacy that 9/11 restored us to moral clarity: "'Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of Lehman Brothers' fall is that it comes almost seven years to the day after 9/11... For all the talk of pulling together in the wake of the terrorist attacks that shook America to the core and supposedly set our priorities straight, Wall Street rushed headlong back to its mindless pursuit of profits and speculation without consideration for the consequences of its actions... At some point, society has to figure out that the way an investor earns his money is even more important than the amount of money he makes. This is why human beings were vested with moral sentiments, so they could distinguish the quality of human conduct from the quality of its results... It is incumbent upon the gatekeepers of capital ... to bring discipline to the system. This will require a rethinking of their priorities and a willingness to add to their investment calculus, considerations that exceed their own narrow interests about short-term investment returns.'" READ MORE >

Opinion > Culture

The Atlantic has an interesting commentary on the popular blog site, Stuff White People Like (also now a New York Times bestselling book). The website features mini-essays by Christian Lander, a PhD dropout now famous for skewering the tastes and mores of ‘White People’—alternately called ‘bourgeois bohemians’ and… READ MORE >

News > Business

In an effort to slow panic selling, the SEC will try to force hedge funds to disclose their short selling positions. What's ironic is who's cheering the agency on: "Morgan Stanley and Goldman are the only two of the formerly five major Wall Street brokerages standing alone, and that is believed to have made them targets of speculators... Last week Lehman was the subject of a massive sell-off that eroded confidence in its business and sparked a funding crisis that ultimately led to its demise. 'It's very clear to me we're in the midst of a market controlled by fear and rumors, and short sellers are driving our stock down,' Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack said in a memorandum to employees Wednesday. 'You should know that the management committee and I are taking every step possible to stop this irresponsible action in the market.'" READ MORE >

Opinion > Politics

The best thing about how the Democratic Party is kicking away what should be an easy victory in the November presidential election is that it might force them to finally reassess their support for abortion and gay marriage, positions that are unpopular with working class voters, their natural constituency. A subplot here is how the Dems were… READ MORE >

Reviews > Movies

Nearly every review of the new film adaptation of Brideshead Revisited has referenced the landmark 1981 miniseries produced for British television starring Jeremy Irons, John Gielgud, Claire Bloom, and Laurence Olivier. With good reason: the 11-hour adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s novel is an obvious entry into the canon of Modern Classics,… READ MORE >

Opinion > Business

If there’s anyone in the mainstream media willing to listen to the Church these days (I doubt it), they’ll discover that centuries of Catholic teaching about the sinful practices of usury and financial speculation can explain why Wall Street is tumbling down. (For the best technical explanation, read The Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy… READ MORE >

Opinion > Culture

The apparent suicide of David Foster Wallace, the prodigiously talented author of the novel Infinite Jest, is a sad, stunning end for a writer whose best work burst with unflagging energy and propulsive imagination. Though often lumped with postmodernists like Thomas Pynchon, Wallace's fiction had a deeply-felt humanity and breadth-of-scope… READ MORE >

Reviews > TV

With the debut of his latest TV series Fringe last week, J. J. Abrams—the writer/director/producer behind Lost, Felicity, and Alias—is back in the spotlight to talk about why he did the things he did with his new, much anticipated sci-fi show. Opening to mixed reviews, the X-Files-esque-medical-puzzle series promises to deliver… READ MORE >

News > Politics

John McCain has criticized his own party's failures and gone against Republican orthodoxy. Has Barack Obama ever gone against his party's line? He "talks a lot about finding ways to move beyond the bloody battlegrounds of the 'culture wars' in America; the urgent need to establish consensus on the emotive issue of abortion," without ever making a concession to pro-lifers. "Politician Obama's support for abortion rights is the most extreme of any Democratic senator... The fact is that a vote for Mr Obama demands uncritical subservience to the irrational, anti-empirical proposition that the past holds no clues about the future, that promise is wholly detached from experience." READ MORE >